Only three days apart, Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain, two successful individuals, took their own lives.

Patrick Radden Keefe recalls:

Looking back over my notebooks this morning, I recognized dark threads running through our conversations. Bourdain freely acknowledged that part of the reason he continued to work at such a frantic pace might have been a fear about where his mind might go if he ever sat still.

Daphne Merkin writes about depression:

I didn’t know Kate Spade, who hanged herself with a red scarf in her bedroom on Tuesday at the age of 55, other than through the prism of her insistently cheerful and whimsical accessories. But everything about Ms. Spade and her designs suggested a sunny temperament, from her candy-colored aesthetic to the perky image she projected. We have a hard time squaring a seemingly successful woman — one with a highflying career, a family and heaps of money — with a despondency so insinuating that it led her to end it all. All this helps explain why Fern Mallis, the former director of the Council of Fashion Designers of America and a friend of Ms. Spade’s, called her death “so out of character.” In fact, it turned out that the bubbly girl from Kansas City “suffered from depression and anxiety for many years,” as her husband, Andy, said.

Mental health is serious and depression is deadly.

Amos Barshad writes in The New Yorker

In the nineteen-forties, a Brooklyn anatomist named James Hamilton studied prisoners in Oklahoma who, having been convicted of sexual assault, were castrated. Hamilton identified testosterone as the root of hair loss, and showed that men castrated before or during puberty did not go bald. He then injected groups of castrated adult men with testosterone and—duly, cruelly—watched their hair fall out.

In the following decades, researchers learned that testosterone does not work alone. An enzyme converts testosterone into a substance called dihydrotestosterone, or DHT, which causes hair follicles to shrink. DHT attacks the dermal papilla, the “brain” of the hair follicle, and is the main cause of male-pattern baldness, which affects more than fifty million men in the United States and also—largely unremarked upon, but true—more than thirty million women.

Barshad has a funny paragraph about Trump:

I’d come to think that the simplest answer was the right one: this was regular male-pattern baldness, elaborately covered up. But the Air Force One incident only deepened the mystery. What kind of hair afflicted by male-pattern baldness rises in the back? I suddenly had no idea which parts of his head contained which hairs. Watching the flaps on the back of his head shoot up again and again, I became unmoored in my beliefs.

When I was young and full of hair, I never thought that I would loose my hair. Now I am bald as fuck. Comparing to all the flaws on my appearance, being bald is not the worst. Other then shaving my head every two or three weeks, I wake up every morning and do nothing to my hair. I don’t even need to go a barbershop. I just don’t care about hair.

Man, I was cajoled by my own two-year-old son. Here’s how he did it:

Xuân: Daddy, I want candy.
Daddy: You just had a donut.
Xuân: But I want candy daddy.
Daddy: OK, but you can only hold it.
Xuân: OK daddy, I’ll hold it.
Daddy: OK here, just hold it.
Xuân: Daddy, can I open it?
Daddy: No, you just hold it.
Xuân: But I want to open it.
Daddy: OK, only open, but hold it OK.
Xuân: OK, but daddy it is too hard. Can you open?
Daddy: OK, here you go.
Xuân: Daddy, can I eat it?
Daddy: No, you just hold it.
Xuân: Daddy, can I eat it? (voice raising).
Daddy: No, just hold it.
Xuân: Daddy, can I eat it? (screaming).

He was so adorable and polite at first until near the end. I also need to clarify my previous post on Xuân. Đạo told me that Xuân didn’t say “stupid, dad.” He said, “Stop it, dad.” I guess he is not as bad as I thought.

Rebecca Mead on Ali Wong’s latest Neflix special:

Perhaps the most radical thing about “Hard Knock Wife” is that nowhere in her routine does Wong mention the obvious fact that, once again, she is pregnant. One way of interpreting her silence is as a bold gesture of liberation—the freedom not to mention her condition, as if it necessarily modified her words. But another way to look at the omission would be that Wong ignores her pregnancy and its implications because, in so many ways, the structure of our society, in its scandalous lack of support for new mothers, persists in doing exactly the same.

Read her comment on The New Yorker.

Haven’t blogged in the last several days because I have been focusing on the second edition of Vietnamese Typography. I have thought about this project for a while. Should I leave the book as it or revise it? Doing a major update will require a chunk of my time to devote to the project. I tempted to leave the website as it, but I know I can make it better. I have lots of ideas on how to improve it. I love to be able to just work on it, but I have a family with three young boys and another one coming soon. As a result, my time is limited.

I love this project even though it does not make me any money. It brought me some consultant gigs, but they aren’t much either. My real joy is seeing new typefaces with Vietnamese. From my interaction with designers and what I have found online, this book has been useful. I came across several mentions of the book.

James Puckett writes for I Love Typography:

I also added support for Vietnamese, using Donny Trương’s book Vietnamese Typography as my guide. Vietnamese uses stacked diacritical marks on some vowels, so I had to carefully balance the weight of each mark to work in single mark letters and Vietnamese…. Designing the Vietnamese marks improved my skills designing marks, making this the best collection of diacritical marks I’ve ever produced.

Florian Hardwig writes for Font In Use:

For those interested in proper Vietnamese typography, Donny Trương provides a good introduction, including an overview of the letters with diacritics that are actually used for marking tonal distinctions in this language.

TypeTogether writes about the extension of Adelle Sans:

A good starting point to better understand the history and the typographic challenges of Vietnamese is Donny Trương’s online book Vietnamese Typography.

Tyrus tweets:

I stumbled into this really interesting and informative site about Vietnamese typography while researching localization and character support for a project. So well done, I wish there was a guide like this for all languages and character sets.

If you find this book is useful, please consider supporting my efforts to make it an even better resource for the type community. You can contribute $10, $5, or $1. Any amount will help.

My goal for the first edition of this book was to expand and enrich the quality of Vietnamese typography. In the last two years since the book published, I am thrilled every time a new typeface released with the Vietnamese language.

Many type designers have used this book to help them understand Vietnamese’s unique typographic features. Even though most of them do not speak or write the language, they have gained insights into subtle details and nuances of the Vietnamese writing system through this book. As a result, they have more confidence in designing diacritics, which play a crucial role in legibility and readability of the Vietnamese language.

They understand that the design of the diacritics is as important as the letters. If the marks are too small, readers will have a difficult time distinguishing each word. If the marks are too large, the flow of text can be interfered. Without clear, proper diacritical marks, the reading experience can be disjointed and disrupted. When the marks are missing, readers have to slow down or stop to guess at words, which can distort, or obscure entirely, the original meaning of the text.

Since the release of this book in 2016, I have been fortunate to play a small role in advising type designers all over the world to make their typefaces appear natural and comfortable for Vietnamese readers. In interacting with them, I have gained more understanding of the issues and the confusions they faced when designing diacritics for Vietnamese. I have nothing but positive and supportive experiences working with type designers. I appreciate the caring and the attention they devoted into crafting Vietnamese diacritics. To show my appreciation to the type community, I have revised this book and expanded the illustrations to showcase new typefaces with the Vietnamese language.

David Remnick on John McCain:

But even if you never would have voted for him—and I didn’t and wouldn’t—McCain cannot fail to leave a deep impression. His efforts, with John Kerry, to revive diplomatic relations with Vietnam; his leadership on campaign-finance reform; his moral opposition to torture; his vote against the first real effort to repeal Obamacare—these were stands that were, in large measure, reviled in his party and among many of his constituents in Arizona.

Read Remnick’s “John McCain, Honor, and Self-Reflection” on The New Yorker.

Before going to sleep last night, I kissed Đạo and told him that I love him. He responded, “I love you, daddy, and mommy.” I said, “Yes, I love mommy too.” Then he said, “But she doesn’t love you.” I was a bit surprised so I asked him why he said that. “She doesn’t show and she’s always yelling at you.” He answered.

I asked him, “I often yelled at you too, but you still love me. Why?” He replied, “When I do something wrong, you yelled at me so I wouldn’t do it again next time.” I am so glad he understood.

He obviously noticed that my wife does not show her affection. As parents, we need to show our kids we love each other. We need to hug more, kiss more, and holding hands more. We need to argue less and keep our voice down. We need to show our kids how much we love each other.

Giữ già và trẻ, em chọn ai? Qua album Sống hấp dẫn, Hoàng Quyên chọn cả hai. Đáng tiếc rằng, hai đường lối khác nhau khiến cho album mất đi sự tâm trung cho người nghe. Từ giai điệu jazz buồn chuyển sang nhịp điệu dance vui nhộn tạo ra cảm giác lộn xộn.

Đây không hẳn là lỗi của người ca sĩ mà luôn cả phần của người thực hiện album. Đỗ Bảo và Võ Thiện Thanh là hai nhạc sĩ với styles khác nhau. Khi họ cùng làm việc với nhau đã không tìm ra được một phong cách hòa hợp cho Hoàng Quyên. Với chất giọng già dặn trầm buồn, Hoàng Quyên thích hợp với dòng nhạc jazz hơn. Nếu như Hoàng Quyên chỉ làm việc riêng với Đỗ Bảo để thực hiện một album jazz thuần túy thì hiệu quả hơn.

Chẳng hạn như bài “Bên kia ngọn đồi”, một nhạc phẩm pop của Võ Thiện Thanh, được Đỗ Bảo biến hóa thành một bài bossa nova say sưa hấp dẫn. Ngược lại bài ballad “Nghịch lý” của Đỗ Bảo được Võ Thiện Thanh remix lại với nhịp điệu dance funk mới như không phù hợp với lối hát cứng cỏi của Hoàng Quyên. Đây không phải là chê bai Võ Thiện Thanh. Chỉ là dòng nhạc của anh không ăn rơ với giọng hát Hoàng Quyên.

Hôm nay đi party ăn mừng người bạn của vợ được thăng chức. Cả hai vợ chồng người bạn làm cùng chỗ với vợ nên mời rất nhiều đồng nghiệp. Tôi thì chẳng quen biết ai cả và bận bịu chạy theo thằng Xuân nên cũng không giao thiệp nhiều. Nhưng có mấy ông anh chào hỏi thì cũng qua lại đôi lời.

Biết rằng tôi không phải cùng bọn nên hỏi tôi làm ở đâu. Tôi trả lời rằng tôi làm ở nhà (stay-at-home dad). Vì vợ làm lương cao nên tôi khỏi phải đi làm. Tuy không đi làm nhưng ở nhà với ba thằng con trai nên bận lắm. Phải làm tài xế đưa tụi nó đi học bơi, học võ, học đàn, và nhiều sinh hoạt khác như birthday parties và playdates. Vợ chồng chúng tôi sắp có thêm một đứa nữa nên sẽ rất bận.

Các anh ngạc nhiên nhưng khen ngợi tôi có can đảm dám có bốn đứa con. Tôi không dám nhận can đảm. Chỉ vì không muốn đi làm nên có thêm con để được vợ nuôi. Đơn giản thế thôi.